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Persistence may pay for rec-center advocates

Say this for Sally Schaefer and other members of Grand Valley Recreation Resources: They are not quitters. They have not allowed the worst economic recession in 70 years to make them abandon their dreams for a publicly funded recreation center.

The group announced last week it may be ready in 2010 to ask Grand Junction voters for a quarter-cent increase in the city’s sales tax to fund construction of a recreation center estimated to cost $25 million. Operational costs would be paid for through membership dues at the recreation center.

The group hopes to lease some of the 100-acre parcel along the Colorado River where the city plans to develop Las Colonias Park.

Proponents hope that by sometime next year, the economic arc will be trending upward again, and people will be willing to pay for a community recreation center.

We don’t know what the economy will look like in 2010, nor whether Grand Junction voters will be ready to approve this plan. But Grand Valley Recreation Resources has every right to propose this project. It is going about it in a reasonable way, with a broad-based organization that has more than 80 members and a campaign to let the public know well in advance what the project entails.